at OpenHelix

COBALT

I have a vague memory of reading about COBALT a while back, but at the time it was an executable file to download and I think I put it away as “to do.” Well, a couple days ago I was over at the NCBI BLAST site for something (tip of the week?), and noticed there was a “new” flash for COBALT. So, COBALT is now integrated as a web-tool on the NCBI site. The short description of what COBALT is, from the site:

COBALT is a multiple sequence alignment tool that finds a collection of pairwise constraints derived from conserved domain database, protein motif database, and sequence similarity, using RPS-BLAST, BLASTP, and PHI-BLAST.
Pairwise constraints are then incorporated into a progressive multiple alignment.

I haven’t tried it out yet, compared it to other multiple sequence alignment tools, but thought I’d point it out to those who haven’t yet noticed it.